Smoking babies and World No Tobacco Day

Remember the Indonesian 2-year-old with a two pack a day smoking habit?

His name is Aldi Rizal and he’s reportedly kicked his tobacco addiction. (Although MomHouston hopes someone checks in on him in another year or so. You can kill the habit, but you can’t always keep it from coming back from the dead.)

Today is the World No Tobacco Day. Sponsored by the World Health Organization, the day seeks to encourage countries around the world to limit the spread of tobacco. According to their figures, there is one death due to tobacco use and exposure ever six seconds. Children, who are especially susceptible to second-hand smoke, were found to account for 28 percent smoke-related deaths in 2004.

Last November Mara Schiavocampo did check up on Rizal and found that while he’s gained 13 pounds, he hasn’t picked the habit back up. (Yet?) Schiavocampo found however Rizal is not Indonesia’s only smoking youngster. From her report on Huffington Post:

The south Asian country has one of the worst problems with child smokers in the world. Government figures estimate that 25% of kids over the age of three have tried cigarettes, and 3% are regular smokers. 3% might not sound like much, but remember, these are kids over the age of three. That means some kids are lighting up before they even start school. My team had no trouble finding smoking kids in Jakarta. We came across a group sitting near a river bank enjoying an after school cigarette break. One of the kids, nine-year old Ipan, has been smoking a year. “I feel good when I smoke”, he told me. The youngest kid we met was Cipto, five-years old. His mother doesn’t only know he smokes, she does it with him. When we met Cipto he was sitting right next to her, both puffing away.

Part of the reason so many kids smoke in places like Indonesia is the cheap price, they’re easy for kids to buy and companies face almost no regulation on advertising. WHO is trying to change that by getting countries throughout the world to agree to reduce the spread of tobacco products. You can find more information about the campaign here.